One of America's more unconventional action heroes has left us to join The Last Command.

R. Lee Ermey had a distinguished career in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring as a Staff Sergeant, and later receiving honorary promotion to Gunnery Sergeant from the Commandant of the Corps for his work in film and television, portraying roles similar to those he played in life, and for goodwill work done to enhance the reputation and image of the Corps.

He passed in final review on 15 April 2018 from complications arising from pneumonia at age 74.

Semper Fi, Gunny! Godspeed!

PCO.Spvnky member, 353 postsTue 17 Apr 2018at 19:48

msg #2

RIP Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey

There were many Gunny's but this one was ours, such an amazing actor. :(

His role in saving silverman was just awesome....:)

Nintaku member, 586 postsTue 17 Apr 2018at 19:57

msg #3

RIP Gunnery Sergeant R. Lee Ermey

One of my favorite shows on the History Channel was Mail Call. He had such a great sense of humor, and could appreciate military history while not taking himself too seriously. It was a wonderful thing to watch.

Time to dig out my DVDs of Space: Above and Beyond and watch the pilot episode. It wasn't his best-known work...but I always loved it because we saw not only the hard-bitten Marine sergeant, but we saw glimpses of something beyond...genuine care and concern for the Marines he was training. One of my favorite characters, period, and I'm honestly not sure there are many actors that could have pulled it off. I'm quite sure nobody could have done it better.

Yep...from the very beginning. My roommates and I would try and catch it every week...one of the few shows we all wanted to watch. We were all torqued when it got cancelled. Everyone talks about how Fox bungled things with Firefly...S:AAB got screwed over first...

Space AAB didn't screwed but ended its story. What I read at one point is when the usual chit chat about another season was talked about part of the reason being the writers saying they wrote what they had wanted to.